# \[UE5.2\] 2D level building, but it's not grid / tile based. Implementation question. **URL:** \ **Category:** World Creation\ **Tags:** world, unreal-engine, level, editor, Level-Design, Rendering, CPP, Blueprint, question\ **Created:** [June 14, 2023, 12:21am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/ue5-2-2d-level-building-but-its-not-grid-tile-based-implementation-question/1198468 "2023-06-14T00:21:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 4
**Author:** ![Roy\_Wierer.Seda145](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/roy_wierer.seda145/32/906551_2.png) [@Roy\_Wierer.Seda145](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Roy_Wierer.Seda145)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2023, 12:18am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/ue5-2-2d-level-building-but-its-not-grid-tile-based-implementation-question/1198468/4 "2023-06-16T00:18:13Z")
> [@MostHost\_LA](#): > > no one “likes” to use Unreal to make 2D stuff. I noticed 🙂 I tried Unity but I’ve spent years in Unreal c++ already. The Unity editor viewport alone felt awful. Probably because I’m not used to it but compared to how quickly I can set up stuff in UE it’s not an option. > [@MostHost\_LA](#): > > has less legal issues with licensing etc Which are you thinking of here? Is this 2D specific or Unreal specific? > [@MostHost\_LA](#): > > Again, the engine is horrible at nearly everything by now, but it has always been really bad at 2d stuff. > Even a simple game like MarioBros(the first one in 8 bit) is technically impossible when done with the engine _particularly if you want to hit the same memory footprint_. I agree. Instead of plugging in what you need this engine throws everything at you of which 90% goes unused in smaller projects. I don’t want to remove the possibility that their might be 3D elements early on though. I might have scenes in which 3D models rendered “pixely” or with certain shaders to look flat are the better / faster option to produce and render on a 2D background. Either this is 2.5D pre rendered sprites (think early mario kart, donkey kong) or just full 3D. > [@MostHost\_LA](#): > > If you _really_ cant look for a better engine, then use the widget system as much as possible rather than mesh planes. > The widget system allows you (at least once it did) to offset the objects with layer sorting options, which the engine is otherwise incapable of doing. > To achieve the same thing with planes you would need to physically offset them on the depth axis, which is nuts. The gameplay I have so far all plays out on a 2D virtual “plane”. Even if this plane rotates relativeley to the world all relevant gameplay elements play on its X and Y axis, basically attached to its transform. currently the Z axis is indeed used for depth, similar to the Z-Index of widgets. It’s both nuts. In Widgets I don’t use the Z-Index at all because I see it as a bad practice. I use the widget hierarchy to control depth automatically and only set the Z-Index on the first “master” widget I spawn. I am actually very surprised to hear you say widgets because my experience with their performance has been awful. Most importantly this: > [[Bug report] Bad widget performance : Slate : ProcessMouseMove](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/bug-report-bad-widget-performance-slate-processmousemove/506125) If you’d use many widgets at once in a game like metal slug, on the bullets for example, it will slow down to a crawl on pointer events and inefficient widget destruction. I can reproduce this by opening and closing an already optimized main menu rapidly (recreating the widget without garbage collecting the other first). Ahhh… a shame UE doesn’t just work that well… The tile set for the backdrop might still be an option. I tried it as a tileset and as a sprite (single big image) and funnily it rendered only properly as a sprite. I just realized maybe there could be some use in the landscape editor, no idea. if I could snap landscape Z to a constant interval and texture the landscape. It’s just one idea of many. That could only be the backdrop. --- _[View the full topic](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/ue5-2-2d-level-building-but-its-not-grid-tile-based-implementation-question/1198468)._